This book deals with the Second World War in Southeastern Europe from the perspective of conditions on the ground during the conflict. The focus is on the reshaping of ethnic and religious groups in wartime, on the "top-down" and "bottom-up" dynamics of mass violence, and on the local dimensions of the Holocaust. The approach breaks with the national narratives and "top-down" political and military histories that continue to be the predominant paradigms for the Second World War in this part of Europe.
Author(s): Xavier Bougarel, Hannes Grandits, Marija Vulesica
Series: Mass Violence in Modern History
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 295
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Local approaches to the Second World War in Southeastern Europe:
An introduction
Regimes of occupation in Southeastern Europe: A short outline
The regional framework of this book
The four thematic sections
Local approaches to the Second World War: Advantages and challenges
Notes
PART I: Group-making as a process
1. Heirs of the Roman Empire? Aromanians and the fascist occupation of Greece (1941–1943)
Aromanians and the rise of nationalism
Italy and the Aromanian issue in the interwar period
Italy’s plans for Greece at the beginning of the occupation
Alkibiades Diamantis as a political representative of the Aromanians
Italo-Aromanian relations in the first months of occupation
Italy’s official guidelines on the Aromanian issue
Towards armed collaboration
Conclusion
Notes
2. “The Task of the century”: Local dimensions of the policy of forced conversion in the Independent State of Croatia (1941–1942)
Religious conversions between April and June 1941 and the expulsion policy
The regulation of the religious field between April and August 1941
The Chetnik and partisan resistance and conversions
Stjepan Hefer and the launch of the state conversion policy in September 1941
Interactions of the religious and political actors
Conclusion
Notes
3. Forced identities: The use of the category “Yugoslav” to classify inmates in the Mauthausen, Buchenwald and Dachau Nazi concentration camps (1941–1945)
The use of the category “Yugoslav” in Mauthausen from 1941 to
summer 1943
“Yugoslavs” in Dachau and Buchenwald from the Slovenian territories
annexed by Germany: A classification in racial and political terms
Inmates labeled as “Yugoslavs” transferred from Italian prisons to
Germany after September 1943
“Yugoslav” as a category of punishment for concentration camp inmates
“Yugoslav” as a punishment category for former POWs
Conclusion
Notes
PART II: Local dynamics of violence
4. Controlling space and people: War, territoriality and population engineering in Greece during the 1940s
The ethnic dimension
The military dimension
The political dimension
Conclusion
Notes
5. Spatial and temporal logics of violence: The Independent State of Croatia in the districts of Glina and Vrginmost (April 1941–January 1942)
April 1941: “Nearly everyone for Pavelic´”?
1 May 1941: “Russians” at Sjenicˇak in Kordun
4 May 1941, Bacˇuga in Banija: Deathly fear for all, death and exile for
some
The Field Marshal’s post scriptum: “The Croatian people were
appalled”
12–13 May 1941: The Glina inferno
The partisan uprising and the Ustasha Vernichtungskrieg
The human cost of violence in the districts of Glina and Vrginmost between April 1941 and January 1942
Conclusion
Notes
6. Dynamics of unrestrained violence: The massacre of Distomo (10 June 1944)
Contexts and actors
Day of the massacre
Time of violence
Conclusion
Notes
PART III: Local perspectives on the Holocaust
7. The madding clocks of local persecution: Anti-Jewish policies in Bitola under Bulgarian occupation (1941–1943)
Bitola in the eyes of the beholder: Occupation regime and the challenges
of “national unification”
The diary of anti-Jewish measures: Squeezing time and space
The making of Jewish powerlessness: Jewish responses to persecution
Conclusion
Notes
8. Resistance or collaboration? The Greek Christian elites of Thessaloniki facing the Holocaust (1941–1943)
The Greek Christian elites of Thessaloniki
Call for slave labor of Jewish males
Destruction of the Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki
Implementing antisemitic laws: Order to remove Jews from professional associations
The role of the Greek Christian elites in the Holocaust of the Thessaloniki Jews
Main motivations
The paradigm of bystanders
Conclusion
Notes
9. Being a Jew in Zagreb in 1941: Life and death of Lovoslav Schick
Who was Lavoslav Schick? His biographical trajectory until 1941
A close look at the local and temporal micro-level: Schick in 1941
After his death
Conclusion
Notes
PART IV: Everyday life under occupation
10. Escape into normality: Entertainment and propaganda in Belgrade during the occupation (1941–1944)
Radio, press and literature
Theaters, cinemas and various public events
Sporting manifestations
Conclusion
Notes
PART V: Epilogue
11. (Re-)Scaling the Second World War: Regimes of historicity and the legacies of the Cold War in Europe
Aftermaths of war in Europe
The legacies of the Cold War
(Re-)scaling (Southeast) European narratives on the war
(Re-)Scaling local and international perspectives
Establishing new regimes of historicity in post-Cold-War Europe
Beyond the Cold War: Europeanizing the narratives on the war
Notes
